Good points

 I agree that Xbox360 is farther along to pushing its own limits than the PS3. On a scale of one to ten graphics wise, 360 probably started at a 6, is at 7.5 right now, and till hit 9. PS3 started at 7, and might eventually reach 10. But I think that unless things turn around quickly, the developers willing to bring blockbusters to the PS3 that push the graphics to its limits will keep decreasing and it might be too late to save it. Only time will tell.

My prediction: Both formats will lose in a couple years to a more advanced disc format, one that the PS3 can't use, unless perhaps it had a hardware upgrade.

Blu-Ray would still be great for PS3 games, just not movies...

Anyone besides me find a problem with how long this format war is dragging out compared to the average time these disk are likely to be on the market. I don't know I really don't see from my view point right now many people picking up blu-ray disk as opposed to DVD's and don't reallly think this will be the holiday season for that to happen and if you look at the past the VHS tapes were around for about 20 years DVD's only for 10 before a superior technology offering more space came about. If you extrapolate from that and say that blu-ray disk do win this format war but it takes them 2-3 more years at least to knock out HD-DVD's likely having to wait at least a few more years for HDTV saturation to be high enough to make blu-ray the dominant format for home movies. I mean to me personally that looks like the set up for what likely in time would be the release of something like ultra-violet ray which uses a 200nm laser and records onto disk with capacities up to 125GB single layer and has the ability to be octo-layered and hold somewhere around a terabyte of information. I mean that's all just speculation but so is the whole idea of predictiing a winner right now.

I have considered that possibility benkenobi.  I think that blu ray has won this war but that doesn't mean that the blu ray is going to be "in the clear" for that long.  The chinese are adopting their own standard high-def DVD.  What if they decide to flood the market with cheap players and dvd's, and move thier cut-rate product to america?  If this does not happen, I really can't see anything happening to the blu-ray in the next 8 years at least, b/c the formats have each taken more than 10 years before the market has had an upgrade.  VHS in the 80's....dvd's in the 90's....high def DVDs in the 00's...

 chinese formats are nothing, hollywood wont realese movies on them.  Given the piracy there hollywood will avoid them at any cost.

Blu-Ray wil be in hiatus for about as long as it takes for legitimate HD TV market saturation to occur, and that's a long time.

Except (of course) that the majority of people did not upgrade to dvd's in the 90's ...

DVD was first introduced in 1996 and sold slowly. In 2000 (around the release of the PS2) there was finally a great deal of interest in DVD at the consumer level and it began to sell quickly at that point. Most people bought their first DVD player between 2000 and 2005 ...

I'm not too sure whether either HD format will take of largely because I see far more interest from people in Media Center PCs/PVR, Video on Demand and downloadable content than I see for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray ...

Yeah. What is keeping the consumers from buying the blu ray, at least in mass quantities is the price of the players. It will take sony and the rest of the pack a couple of years to bring prices down to a considerable degree. Now, the price for the blu ray movies themselves is getting cheaper all the time. In about 3 weeks, the average price for a blu ray movie off of amazon has dropped $1.40. That is fast.

Still, Sony expects to do well with the blu ray this year. Sony has already made 3 million the first quarter ( Jan-Apr) this year, so I presume that they expect 12-13 million made this year alone. That isn't bad at all. So, while we all agree that blu ray sales aren't really that big of an issue right now, I beleive that it would be a mistake to think that they are miniscule, which seems to be the mood i'm getting round these parts.

I don't know about that video on demand or downloadable stuff.  I think that the majority of the population isn't as geeky as we are, and would just rather pop in a DVD than download and store something off of their computer, to *watch* on their computer screen.  It's no fun to have a group of people cluttered around your computer desk to watch a movie.  It is a lot nicer to be able to sit down on the couch in your home or whatever, and watch a movie. 

 Video on Demand?  Well, I can't say that it will nonexistant but i'm still not that big on it being a major factor in the movie markets.  I've never really watched one of those, but isn't it just the movies that are current, and big?  In other words, if I want to watch pay per view, I can't see that again for free.  That is what DVDs are all about, building a library of your favorite movies.  There is no way that video on demand or downloadable movies can compare with a DVD, whether they are more "high tech or not".